Update on my Dallas

Dallas is such a blast. I still am so in awe of how much I love this little guy! He is just the sweetest blessing! I cannot believe he is 15months already! It has literally just flown by.

Dallas is such a fun little guy. He is walking and almost running and he climbs everything. He can get up on every couch, bed and table. He lives for the pure thrill of immersing both arms in the toilet for as long as he can before mom catches him. He loves all things dog related and loves his sister with all of his heart. I am still his favorite which, I'll be honest, I absolutely love but he gets so excited to see his Dad and yells, "Naaaannnn" for Penny every morning to try to wake her up.

Dalls lives in his big sister's shadow and doesn't need to be the center of attention or make a lot of noise. I can easily take him to the mall for two to three hours and he will quietly sit in his stroller and just hang out. That being said, I also call him my little bulldozer. He pulls down every drink (again, to put both arms in) and walks around the house and gathers as many knick knacks as possible to either break them or hand them to me.

He is so sweet 99% of the time but he also has this wild temper that can simultaneously crack me up and send me to my knees in prayer for him. When he gets mad he will crawl away as hard and fast as his fat little legs will take him and he'll clap his hands really fast. It is seriously the funniest thing.

We love calling Dallas our little man-child. It was really starting to get old that everyone we came in contact with would comment on how big he is but I finally just accepted that that's how God made this kiddo! I totally laughed with the pediatrician at this last appointment when he told me Dallas's head is barely on the chart. He is 70th for weight and 80th for height. I still think he is absolutely darling even if he could probably beat me in an arm wrestling match.

Oh I love this little boy so much!!! Thank you Lord for my Dally!

Update on my Penelope Mae

I recently looked through some really old blog posts and while I hate reading the stuff I wrote (self obsessed much?!), I loved reading and seeing the pictures of Penny when she was so little. I have barely blogged in this last year of Dallas's life and I want to do a much better job to be able to look back on how much these little blessings have grown and changed!

I love being a mom. It is so exhausting and a thousand times harder than I ever imagined it would be but it is also the richest and most sanctifying and rewarding process. The longer I am a mom the more I panic about how little I know. God is so gracious to remind me that these kiddos are His and that He will be faithful to enable me to raise them (and hopefully not screw them up too badly) Ha!

Penny- Penny is four and a half! I can't even believe that! She is at such an interesting stage. She is still our little girl and is full of wonder and energy and joy but she is also growing up so quickly. She battles her heart and her emotions on a hourly basis and I have really been so taken aback by how she truly wants to honor the Lord! Penny is such a perfect balance of both of us. She is funny and sweet like her dad but is also weird and emotional like her mom. She makes us laugh CONSTANTLY. She comes up with the funniest things to say and her sass, while it often gets her in trouble, just absolutely slays us.

 Penny loves all things girly and she wants to wear dresses 24/7 but she can also wrestle and be thrown around like a cage fighter. She adores her dad and hates when he sleeps, works or does anything except for playing with her. She also loves her brother. Almost a little too much. She loves listening to stories and will sing and perform anything for anyone. I love her so very much.

She recently finished her second year of swim and it went so much better than last year (Thank the Lord!!) She loves playing with playdough, having family time (wrestling with mom and dad), going to the mall and book store and playing with her cousin, Ray or best friend, Olive. 

She still can't say her y's and I hope she never ever can. I guess by the time college rolls around she can maybe start to pick it up, but for now I just love it! She recently came home from Sunday school and told me, "mom, today I yearned about yittle Yincoln. He never told a yie."

Visit from Oma!

I wrote this quite some time ago but for some reason I never published it...

The night we returned from our vacation my mom flew into town to surprise my sister Stephanie for her 21st birthday. We LOVE when my mom comes to town! I really miss her all the time and hate that my parents live so far away! Penny just adores Oma and can't get enough of her!

Mom flew in Wednesday night and the next morning Mom, the kids and I drove to Master's to pick up my sister and surprise her. Here is the video...

Aren't they the cutest?!

The kids and I took Steph and my mom to Disneyland and it was such a perfect day! Mom and Steph got stuck on Space Mountain for a really long time and actually had to be evacuated by the fire department but because of that Disney gave us several "front of the line" vouchers so it worked out pretty well!

 

Mom, Penny, Dallas and I drove down to Long Beach and got to see Disney on Ice! 

It was awesome and Penny loved it but Dallas was completely wild the entire time and I barely watched five minutes of it. We still had a great time. 

I absolutely love this picture of my girl.

We really had so much fun having my Mama here. I love her so much and it always makes my heart hurt that I live so far away from her. She is such a great Grandma to my kiddos and such a dear friend to me. Love you so much Oma!

Coronado Family Vacation

Lets just skip over the "It's-so-lame-I-haven't-blogged-in-such-a-long-time-I-forgot-the-name-of-my-blog" and get to the updates!

A couple weeks ago, for my Spring break, we decided to take our first ever family vacation! Well, that's not exactly how it worked. I had mentioned the idea of taking a vacation to Jona and decided to look on Priceline to get some ideas. Long story short, I ended up accidentally placing a bid and it was accepted. It turned out to be such a blessing and I really loved our first little vacation!

We drove down to Coronado, and true to form, we left pretty late. We arrived at our hotel around dinner time and I got the kids and luggage into the room while Jona went and parked the car. I opened the balcony door, turned around, took Dallas out of the stroller and Penny started screaming. In 5.2 seconds she managed to get her head stuck between the bars of the balcony. I seriously could not believe it. It was sorta funny but she was really panicking. I tried to pull her head out but it was just not happening. I called Jona and told him to run while I pictured having to call the fire department, them sawing the bars and being charged $500 by the hotel. Thankfully, our hero came in the room, pulled the bars apart a little bit and pulled her free. Not before I took a picture, of course.

Once we finished our lecture about never ever putting your head between bars, we headed out to explore the area around our hotel and get some dinner. Coronado was so gorgeous and the weather could not have been more perfect!

We walked down and grabbed some pizza and let the kids play on the beach a little bit.

This was right after we saw a duck in the water and Penny screamed "SHARK!!"

He looks so old in this picture!

My Loves!

After dinner and the beach we went back to our hotel, took baths and tried to go to sleep. This is where we quickly realized our mistake of not having two rooms, or a suite to help everyone sleep better. We were up a lot during the night and Dallas wakes up super early which woke up Jona and Penny so our next day started out really early and on very little sleep!

We headed to "Snooze" which was a breakfast recommendation from my sister-in-law, Julie who is from San Diego. She had told me about this place a while ago and we had always wanted to go but it never worked out. IT WAS AMAZING. Seriously, if you are ever in San Diego you MUST eat here!

Best Eggs Benedict of my life!

Snooze had a really fun chalkboard your could draw on while you wait. No, Pen did not write the word "poop"

After breakfast we headed over to Seaworld. I've always wanted to go but after watching Blackfish I felt a little skeptical. We decided to give them our money anyway, Haha! The lack of sleep the previous night really caught up to Pen and Dallas and there were A LOT of tears. Jona and I just kept looking at each other wondering why on earth we did this. Just kidding, it wasn't that bad, but next time we are definitely working naps into our vacations!

We really did have a great time together at Seaworld and I am looking forward to returning sometime this summer!

These little sucker fish are awesome! Pen was slightly freaked out by the whole thing

I really loved Seaworld's play areas. I wish Disneyland had something like that!

Dallas loved the turtles!

Thankfully, Seaworld closed at 5pm so we grabbed dinner and headed back to the hotel for baths and tried to go to sleep, however we had another night of very little sleep. We woke up pretty early the next morning and grabbed a quick breakfast and decided to walk down by the beach for a little while.

Just a little bit of back story, historically, I hate the beach. It is hot. People are practically naked, and there's sand. Lots of sand. Everywhere. The beach with kids sorta makes me want to cry. Recently I have had a couple of good beach experiences and I'm a Californian for Pete's sake. I REALLY want to love the beach. I'm just not there yet. It was sorta funny because this actually started off really nicely!

Dallas fell asleep right before we got there and the tide was really far out. We didn't want to wake him up so we decided to carry his stroller aaaallllll the way out there. When we finally got to where we want to sit I loved watching Pen play in the sand and it was absolutely gorgeous. Jona decided he wanted to go put on his trunks so that he could swim. It took him a really long time to go get them and come back. Everything was still fine when he returned but the second he got way out into the water things went a little south. Dallas woke up and I didn't have the sunscreen with me cause I had left it so I was working so hard to keep him shaded. Penny asked if she could run a little ways away and run back to me. I told her sure as long as she turned around so that she could see me and I would tell her if she could keep running or if she needed to come back. She would run like five feet and turn around and then I would tell her she could keep running. This worked about ten times then all of the sudden she just took off. I have no idea what happened, but I had to pick up Dallas and the umbrella and run as fast as I could after her. She eventually realized how far she ran and she freaked out and started crying which led her to rub her eyes, which led to sand in her eyes and more crying which led to Dallas crying and we just completely fell apart.

When Jona finally came out of the water, he said something to the effect of, "Did you have fun running on the beach?" Um. No. Haha!

We finally got cleaned up and carried the stroller back through the sand and jumped in the car and headed to "D Bar", which is another incredible restaurant. The "D" is for dessert and they do not mess around! We had a great lunch and then jumped in the car and headed home.

Both kids were out immediately and slept the entire way home from San Diego!

We really had a great time and I cannot wait to get away again! I love this little family the God has given me and we have so much fun together. Next time we will include lots of naps,  hopefully very little sand in the eyes and no more narrow balcony bars :)